RTFM - Read the front of the manual!

This server room is having some cooling issues -- "due to the typical inverse ratio of money spent on servers to money spent on air conditioning," says an IT pilot fish on the scene.

"Eventually, we convince our facilities manager to bring in a portable AC unit to help ease the load while a more permanent solution can be worked out. The unit gets installed and everything is just fine for about two weeks."

Then one night, the on-call tech gets an automatic page: high temperatures in the server room.

He goes in to check it out. It's hot, all right -- close to 90 degrees in the server room. And he quickly spots the cause: The portable cooling unit isn't cooling -- it's blowing warm air.

Tech shuts down everything noncritical. Fortunately, the only hardware damage he finds is a dead power supply in one server, and that's easily replaced.

But first thing the next morning, Monday morning, an air-conditioning tech is called in to examine the portable unit.

He quickly spots the cause of the problem, too.

"Apparently, when the unit was set up, a tab from the condensate pump was never removed," fish says. "So the drain tube filled up and kicked off the switch, and the condenser shut down -- hence the warm air.

"To make things more interesting, the manual was attached to the tab -- with 'Caution! Please remove Tab!' on the front cover."

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